By: Andrew Wing

Emily the Criminal is a 2022 American crime drama film written and directed by John Patton Ford. It stars Aubrey Plaza (Parks and Recreation, Safety Not Guaranteed), Theo Rossi (Sons of Anarchy), Megalyn Echikunwoke (Night School), and Gina Gershon (Bound).

Emily (Plaza), who is saddled with student debt and locked out of the job market due to a minor criminal record, gets involved in a credit card scam that pulls her into the criminal underworld of Los Angeles, ultimately leading to deadly consequences.

It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 24, 2022, and was released in the United States on August 12, 2022, by Vertical Entertainment and Roadside Attractions.

THE GOOD

Ever since premiering at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Emily the Criminal has been one of my most anticipated movies to check out mainly because of the widespread positive reviews it has gotten. Another reason for my excitement was the inclusion of Aubrey Plaza, an actress I am a huge fan of. Plaza is largely known for her hilarious role in Parks and Recreation, but for the past five years I have been really impressed with some of her dramatic performances in small indie films like Ingrid Goes West and Black Bear, so I was pumped to see if she could go up another level with her performance in Emily the Criminal. So with that said, was this Plaza’s career-best performance? Keep reading to find out!

IT WAS! I mentioned some of her other performances, but I really do think this is the best. Plaza’s character is a woman who gets slowly integrated into a world of crime, specifically credit card fraud, and the way she portrayed this character’s descent into madness if you will call it that, was remarkable. It was so fun as we got to discover what this character had up her sleeve the deeper we got into the story, and it was just so fun to watch Aubrey Plaza become an absolute badass in this world of crime. She just continues to stretch her limits as an actress in these indie films, and I’m just buying all the stock in her. She carries this film with ease, she has the range to do anything, and it’s not surprising the legendary Francis Ford Coppola recently cast her to be in his highly anticipated Megalopolis, which will feature her starring alongside my favorite actor Adam Driver.

There’s no denying that Plaza stole the show here thanks to her performance, but this is just a solid crime drama film at the end of the day. It was written and directed by John Patton Ford and I was just really impressed by what he did with his feature film debut. The movie is a thriller that starts in a really grounded place which I was a fan of. That grounded feel made the way the story unfolded surprising when things started to escalate and it was just a very good script full of well-written characters. As good as his writing was, the direction though was great. The film is very tense and anxiety-inducing and Ford just did a fantastic job of heightening the tension at all the right spots

I usually don’t dive super deep into my movie reviews, but for this one, I will. So continuing with my praise for Ford, I liked the film’s commentary on how once someone is labeled a criminal and has a criminal record, no matter how small and harmless the crime might have been, you are forever deemed a criminal by society and that makes it extremely hard to get a job and make a living. We obviously see this firsthand with Plaza’s character Emily, who believes more in being a criminal than capitalism because she’s drowning in student loans. I don’t know, I’m not saying I’m pro-being a criminal, but I just thought it gave the film another layer of depth and made the character of Emily extremely relatable despite her criminal nature.

Before I wrap up the good, there are some more things I want to give some love to when it comes to Emily the Criminal, the first being Theo Rossi. I remember Rossi from his small supporting role in Sons of Anarchy, but he just crushed it here. His character was given a lot and Rossi’s performance just made you like his character who was also a criminal and made you see him as this warm, genuine person. The editing too here from Harrison Atkins was awesome. I was locked in from the start and the 93 minutes runtime was perfect. The cinematography was solid too and being a big fan of close-ups, I loved all of the close-ups we got in this film, so shoutout to cinematographer Jeff Bierman.

THE BAD

As much as I enjoyed this movie, the reason for my score which you’ll see shortly is simply because I don’t know if I can say the movie did anything exceptionally. Don’t get me wrong, this is a solid straightforward thriller with great performances, but I just can’t put it in that upper echelon of crime drama films which there are aplenty. Also, and I say this a lot when I critique movies, but I just wanted to see them dive a bit deeper into the world they were showing to us. I just wanted to see this movie try to take things a step further and I think it not doing that is why I didn’t totally love the ending. Other than that small gripe of mine though, there’s nothing bad about this movie and I have a hard time seeing anyone not enjoy Emily the Criminal.

THE VERDICT

Behind a career-best performance from Aubrey Plaza, Emily the Criminal is a thrilling crime drama from John Patton Ford in his feature film debut. It’s not groundbreaking, but it’s rock solid and just such an easy-to-watch film that you’re going to be locked into from start to finish thanks to both its crisp editing from Harrison Atkins and its perfect runtime of 93 minutes.